


It’s the way the water flows (The way the story goes)

by SquaresAreNotCircles



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Coda, Episode: s05e23 Mo'o 'Olelo Pu (Sharing Traditions), Gen, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Kono Kalakaua/Adam Noshimuri (Mentioned) - Freeform, Mother-Daughter Relationship, POV Kono Kalakaua, Team as Family, canon-typical levels of unwise decisions to ignore sound medical advice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-10 15:10:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20530070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SquaresAreNotCircles/pseuds/SquaresAreNotCircles
Summary: This hospital room is not where she wants to be right now.Chin shakes his head at her when she points this out. He’s been doing that almost the entire time, with varying degrees of worry, relief, joy, and disapproval at her lack of patience. “It’s where youneedto be.”Or: A coda to 5.23, because that episode always makes me cry, but I can’t help but feel there’s something missing from the end of it.





	It’s the way the water flows (The way the story goes)

**Author's Note:**

> SO THIS. This is something I had half written ever since the first time I watched 5.23, ten months ago or so. It's one of the first ten fics I ever started in this fandom and today it finally got finished. 
> 
> Nani Kalakaua is, according to iMDB, the name of Kono’s mother. The title of this fic comes from _Sometimes_, a song by Gerry Cinnamon.
> 
> -
> 
> EDIT – A small recap, because I totally understand that people might need it if they haven’t been obsessively thinking about the episode in question: in 5.23, Kono sets sail on an outrigger canoe to make a solo journey around the islands, but gets caught up in a storm. Her phone gets soaked and is barely working, and she is left with only her paddleboard. As her situation gets progressively more dire, we get flashbacks to various moments in her youth where her mother taught her about the sea and Hawaiian culture, and also talks about wanting to go on this solo journey Kono is now attempting – which she never got to do, because in the present Kono’s mother is in a wheelchair after suffering a stroke. 
> 
> The Five-0 team solve a tiny B-plot case, but (Chin especially) spend a lot of time worrying about Kono, and when she eventually does manage to get some words through to Chin before her phone is fully lost, they set up a major search and rescue action. It’s delayed and made more difficult by another storm rolling in. At the end of the episode, Kono makes it back to shore on her own, Chin gets a call from the hospital telling her she’s been found and brought in, and we end on Kono in a hospital bed and another flashback to tiny!Kono and her mom on the beach.

This hospital room is not where she wants to be right now.

Chin shakes his head at her when she points this out. He’s been doing that almost the entire time, with varying degrees of worry, relief, joy, and disapproval at her lack of patience. “It’s where you _need_ to be.” 

She grabs his hand. He pulls back, scared to hurt her if he touches her burnt skin, and she lets him because he’s kind of right. “Cuz,” she tries anyway, as beseeching as she knows how with her raspy throat, “I love you, but you’re being way overprotective.”

“With good reason,” Danny pitches in. He’s sitting in a chair by the wall instead of hovering over her bed. She appreciates the bit of distance, because she might have to clock someone if they all try to motherhen her at once, this temporary weakness of her limbs be damned. She still sends him a prickly look, but he shrugs, unrepentant.

Steve, who reasonably should have more chill than Danny but seems to have left all of it at home today, starts tugging at a corner of her blanket, like his hands are itching to tuck her in. She bats him away, perhaps with a little more force than necessary, and he has the good sense to look moderately abashed. “Sorry.”

“Guys, I’m fine. Really. I just want to go home.”

Steve opens his mouth, but he’s cut off by both Chin and Danny. “No,” they say, eerily coordinated. Chin even raises a finger to point at Steve. She’s tempted to bite it out of sheer frustration. If they keep her cooped up in here much longer, she’s going to end up scratching at the walls.

“Listen,” Chin says. He’s pitching his voice deliberately to project maximum calm, and it does wonders for victims and witnesses every day, but she’s known him too long and too well to fall for it. “Lou is bringing Adam over as we speak. Don’t you want to see him?”

“Of course I do. Tell Lou to take him to my place, and I’ll be there after I do this one thing.”

Chin levels a Look at her, but she gives him one of her own right back. They have a staring contest that doubles as a silent conversation.

When Chin finally admits defeat, he closes his eyes for a moment and pinches the bridge of his nose, before planting his hands in his sides. “No,” he says. “We’ll tell Lou to drop him at my house, which is where you’ll be staying until I say you’re recovered.”

She considers going against that, but he’s switched from pure zen to wearing his _I’m your older cousin and I’m putting my foot down_ expression. It’s never worked on her when she hasn’t allowed it to, and she thinks he knows that, but she still lets him have his way most of the time when he gets like this. It’s important to him. Part of taking care of him is letting him take care of her.

“Chin’s house,” she confirms to Steve and Danny. “Now break me out of here, guys. Chop chop.”

While Steve and Chin set about gently but efficiently untangling her from her IV lines, Danny leaves briefly and returns carrying a robe for her to wear over the hospital gown she’s gotten stuck in. She’s sitting up on the side of the bed when he slips it around her shoulders. “Just for the record, babe, this is a really bad idea.”

“Your complaint has been noted,” Steve says. He takes one side and Chin the other, and together they bear almost all of her weight while she carefully tests out her body’s willingness to let her stand on her feet. Danny holds the door for them and they shuffle through it, a strange six-legged creature moving sideward to fit.

A nurse tries to block their path in the middle of the hallway, wearing a look of alarm. “I would highly advise against-” she starts to say, but before Steve, Chin and Kono even have to break their hobbly stride, Danny runs interception and steers the woman aside by her arm.

“It’s fine, we’re Five-0,” Kono hears him tell her. As she passes, she gives him the best approximation of a thankful smile that cracked lips and a face that pulls painfully around all the burned skin will allow her. He keeps running his mouth while he shoots back a thumbs up that morphs into a covert shaka halfway through.

Steve’s huge body makes a movement under her arm like a silent laugh. “You keep performing miracles today, Kono. I’ve never seen him do that, ever.”

They make it to the elevator with no more healthcare professionals trying to change their mind, and from there to the parking lot, where Steve hands Chin the keys to his Silverado and then hoists her up on the passenger side. He lingers in the open door for a moment.

“I’ll be fine, boss,” she assures him.

He gives her a serious look. “I know you will. Be careful, alright?”

He closes the car door, and then stands in the parking lot watching while Chin maneuvers the truck towards the street. Kono can see him for a little while in the side mirror, a rapidly shrinking figure.

She leans against the headrest and lets her eyes slip closed for just a moment. Chin doesn’t try to engage her in conversation, argue more, or ask where she wants to go. He knows.

Kono is very close to sleep when the car rolls to a stop, gently, and it wakes her. She opens her eyes to see that she is almost where she was headed all this time, parked in a car in front of the house she grew up in. “Help me out?” she asks, and Chin does just that, again carrying her most of the distance across the yard.

The door is open. They find her father in the living room, who jumps up, takes her weight from Chin and wraps her up in a hug so careful she feels like porcelain. “Kono,” he says, with a tremble to his always so level voice. “You scared us.”

She presses her face to his shoulder and breathes in his familiar, calming scent. “I’m sorry.”

“What are you doing here? We would have tried to visit you in the hospital tomorrow.”

“I’ll explain, Uncle,” Chin says, helping Kono gently escape her father’s arms.

She leaves them behind, certain that Chin has got it covered, and moves deeper into the house on her own strength. Into the kitchen, through the back door, until she gets to the back lanai, shuffling and tired but with enough fire burning inside that she’d make it miles this way if needed.

And there she is: her mom, exactly where Kono knew she’d find her, sitting on the lanai with her wheelchair parked where she might not be able to see, but will at least be able to smell and distantly hear the ocean.

Kono collapses to her knees next to the chair. Her mom turns to look at her, smiles through a brittle frown, and moves a hand, slowly, reaching out.

That’s when, for the first time, Kono’s vision starts blurring, hindered by the tears that well up. She lets them fall freely. “Hi mom.” Neither of them are scared of a little salt water, and wiping away tears is less important than using both hands to hold on to her mother’s, which is weak and a little cold, but still _her mom_. “I have a story to tell you.”

**Author's Note:**

> I have. Many emotions. About this episode. It was very good, and I really wish h50 had given us more like that for Kono (or any female character, really), because with 5.23 they showed that they do _know_ how to respectfully write realistic women and even really wonderful Bechdell-passing relationships, but still they just… don’t do it, ninety-five percent of the time. And it’s honestly a goddamn tragedy. Gosh.
> 
> But thank you for reading!! Comments are so very welcome, always. ❤
> 
> I'm on Tumblr as [itwoodbeprefect](https://itwoodbeprefect.tumblr.com), or with my exclusively H50 sideblog as [five-wow](https://five-wow.tumblr.com).


End file.
